Where did you get the idea that Obama wants to send troops to fight in Syria? He doesn't even propose flying over the country, must less putting troops on the ground there. What would happen is drone or missile strikes.

It would be ironic if by sending in those missile/drone strikes and Bashar al-Assad moves his valuable assets out of harms way and sends in civilians there and a lot of innocents get killed by the strikes, more than got gassed, how would that look to the world? All those people already got killed and now a relatively few got killed by chemical weapons. I guess the first few thousands didn't count. Now we are saying, oh, we have to prevent chemical weapons from falling into the wrong hands? Aren't they in the wrong hands now? And who used them, I hear both sides have used them on occasion. This "action" is only political posturing, Obama has no idea how to actually solve the problems there and we wind up looking bad, spending more money we need here and butting into international affairs again. The war hawks need to put away their six shooters and stop pretending they are the Lone Ranger to the rescue.

Non-proliferation means keeping them from getting into more wrong hands. If they're in the wrong hands now, there's not much that can be done about that.

Yes, even the rebels have been accused of using chemical weapons. Probably captured from Assad's own stores.

That's not the point. The point is to AT LEAST TRY to keep the chemical weapons from wandering to Iran or al Qaeda. Can you even imagine how much aql Qaeda would love to follow up 9/11 with a huge sarin gas attack in a major US city?

The mean motherfuckers didn't end the war in Viet Nam, the flower children did. You can not change a culture using war, unless you annihilate that culture. Short of that, you just deepen the hate and breed terrorists. When the "shock and awe" is over, and the body parts are buried it's all the same, just worse.

How many international fuck-ups, 9/11s, and dead young Americans will it take?

As long as there are war profiteers, bankers, politicians willing to go along with it, media that transmits the propaganda that "we have to do something" and "lets get the bad guys". Appealing to those who will buy the BS. The military is for our defense, not for empire building and policing the world.

It still mystifies me why use of chemical weapons in a civil war has anything to do with our security, they already have them and that won't change. Attacking them most likely will make it even more probable of some sort of revenge action here, and overall, will kill more people.

The mean motherfuckers didn't end the war in Viet Nam, the flower children did.

Yeah, but they forced essentially a defeat (which was okay with me: it was an unjust war) and they treated the returning soldiers like criminals, contributing to many suicides.

But let's imagine a real war situation where the other side is determined to defeat your side (let's be unspecific about which side you're on). You're seriously going to meet shock troops and tanks with flower children?